(Thanks to LJ for teh pic.)Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Which of these best describes America during the Obama administration?
For those of you who believe the whole hopey changiness thingy, you believe that our current President was born great. Or, at least, that our President will achieve greatness.
What happens if greatness is thrust upon our President?
There are a multitude of problems facing the White House. All of them courtesy of George W. Bush. None of these problems are of our President’s own making. Our President inherited all of them.
Hmm.
I had a hard time listening to Republican apologists working to describe the economic downturn that began to be noticed in 2001 as “Bill Clinton’s” legacy. For me it was time to man up. Explain the downturn, take it, and make it yours. And then explain the ways in which you were going to attack it. Worse, were the imputations that these Clinton legacy effects were still in effect after 9-11. Well, hell yah. Don’t be a dope! Who wouldn’t think that the attacks as vicious as those perpetrated against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a hole in Pennsylvania wouldn’t exacerbate an economic downturn?
Personally, I’ve had to come into companies that were struggling, to fix them. It’s what I do.
Who cares what led to our current situation? If you’ve inherited a bankrupt company your job will not be easier if you blame your predecessors. (In fact, nobody wants to hire an “Alibi Ike”.)
I explain to my kids that God invented time so that “everything doesn’t happen at once”. The flip-side to that coin is, don’t expect everything to be done at once.
And I don’t.
I’m old fashioned. In a lot of ways. I want the Four Lads to sing at my funeral. “It’s Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”. I want—with apologies to Saul Bellow—many things.
I can live without many things. There are a few things that I have found that I cannot live without. I do not want to wake up tomorrow to find that these few things have disappeared. And you do not want to find America lacking in some of these things.
If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you’ve read before of my affection for President Gerald Ford. What “sealed the deal” for me was his masterful diplomacy leading up to the Helsinki Accords. For those of you new to this site, I welcome you, and ask you to read this document.
This was the masterful document that set up the ascension of President Reagan’s and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s defeat of the former Soviet Union. And for you revisionists out there, I was no fan of President Reagan prior to his election. But the proof is in the pudding. While President Ford may have gained a certain acrimony from what is today referred to as the “Christian conservatives,” it is true that President Ford’s masterful diplomacy during his tenure in office, albeit short, put into place the diplomatic tools that were necessary for the follow-on of the Thatcher-Reagan years.
I watched the ‘Stash on Greta Sustern’s show last night. Listening to the Ambassador one is struck by the sheer incompetence of our President’s current foreign policy team. Joe Biden was right. The President is being tested. The question is, is anybody grading the President?
We’ve had notably disastrous Presidents when it comes to foreign policy…most notably President Carter. It can be argued that in retrospect the Clinton Administration also fell short, whether it was in pursuit of Al-Qaeda or Secretary Albright’s curious work with the North Koreans. To their credit, however, was at least an older cadre of foreign policy wonks who were aware of the impact of a North Korean nuclear program on two of our most important allies; Japan and South Korea.
The administration is caught up with the shiny tools of power. They are focused on achieving goals that attempt to overcome market forces; an attempt to gain control over the industrial and financial markets in the United States. As the common Joe wakes up to the priors in place, criticism of our current, massive deficit increases up-tick in intensity. Yeah, Martha, those deficits are that large.
No one will want to buy the new Government Motors automobile. The Environmental/Leftist Complex doesn’t care about market values. Their values are of a higher kind. It’s all about Change!™
So we’ll live for a while at a Dow of 8500. When inflation begins to roar, people will complain. Automakers will make cars that no one will want to buy. GM and Chrysler will again need to be bailed out. Union employees will have job guarantees. A re-reading of post-war England should be required of our public school kids. But that would be too harsh. We’re on a path toward insignificance. But that is what the Enviro/Leftist Complex wants.
They’re getting what they want.
Change! ™
0 comments:
Post a Comment